Beer Baron

AGE I hate to break the news but in sydney everyone standing still or walking slow stands on the left and people in a hurry on the right on escalators. and most buildings have plastic umbrella holder machines in the city. you stick your umbrella in, and pull it out and it comes out wrapped in plastic! we still do not have widespread use of toilets that wash your crack though. and judging by the smell on the train the other day we sure could use them...

Hi mate, I've never taken much vid in japan. some drifting etc. but I'm usually too busy doing stuff to want to film or even photograph things. sometimes you don't really enjoy stuff if you just spend all the time taking pics. plus it's hard to film/shoot when driving. there are some pics there from daikoku and other wangan rest stops which are actually built onto (under or on the side of) the wangan. I've taken pics like that when we stop there to meet people, have a drink, break etc.

oooh, I just got some free tickets and spencer is running his new car (alfa built for a customer of his, tony). should be very quick. his old car that we built together absolutely blitzed at the events we ran at. the sad bit is i'm not sure I'll make it as i've got 100 things to do tomorrow. farken.

I just put 6 months rego on it yesterday, farken $800 worth of blue slip, green slip and rego. I'm feeling festive at the moment, so Beer Baron is slashing prices on all his quality autos. lol. $17,500 flat will see you drive off in JDM trucking style. I'll even chuck in a packet of mild sevens and a can of boss coffee so you can really look and smell like a JDM trucker...

that's ok. thread is moot now and once he picks it up tomorrow I'll close it. this is the last day that it's mine. his deposit has cleared, the paperwork has been drawn up and pending final payment and pick-up tomorrow it has a nice new home. the new only tells me they'll 'keep it till they die' which is nice, I just hope it's not in the RX7!!! and for the record in the year I've owned this car it has never broken down, never caused me any real problems and I've very much enjoyed driving it. Everything in it works, and it's so much fun to drive. very 'lively'... I really hope the new owner loves it.

yeah for sure. I've told russ many times you have first dibs on the 33. stop talking smack and pony up some rupees for it. he is tarting it up for you as we speak. it's been getting some intermittent loving in recent times I think to ready it for a new home somewhere.

nice pics mate. make sure you get some pics of the exhaust and the combustion chambers of the head. you've only got pics of the one side (inlet) so far and the exhaust and combustion chambers will show where the $$ went make sure you do get some or at least get them to turn it over so you can see it as once it's on the engine you'll never see it again...

yes you find them everywhere in japan. quite often out of america but sadly england and australia is well represented too. they left their home country as they had no prospects, no skills, no friends, and no job. they get a teaching job in japan, and as you say a few ugly girls tell them they are good looking and all of a sudden they are superstars! there is actually a technical term for them.... LBH = looser back home. they can however be fun to spot in bars and clubs in roppongi. especially at around 1 hr from closing time when they have still not managed to score and realising that people are starting to leave and the place will be closing they start to get desperate and begin rapidly buying drinks an making hard passes for the few single chicks that are left there. not realising of course that any chick still not with a guy at 5am in a club is most likely not interested in hooking up at all and is just there with her girlfriends for a fun night out, or she is a 'good girl' who lives in yokohama or chiba and missed the last train out of tokyo and just decided to stay till morning train... the LBH who have somehow managed to score a decent job or an actual good looking chick are even worse. they can be completely unbearable.

bugger all unfortunately. they are nice quality though. don't worry, one day soon that car will be mine, and when it get's here I will take a look under them and find the makers stamp for you. If I remember next time I'm talking to Tets I will ask if he knows/remembers what brand they are. The car looks so cool in real life. just a shame I couldn't get any good pics of it as it was parked in that day. also in the last pic is the 350Z (sorry Fairlady... lol) i was driving and next to it is an unassuming looking white chaser... well it has roll cage, brakes and a monster 550hp SR20 conversion and had just recently won a circuit event at their local track. it belongs to Tono the head mechanic at Prime.

car looks good. shame about the damage but it is a drift car. and on a wet track there is always going to be a bit of damage! best of luck for the next one.

forget all the confusion between rising rate and 1:1 fuel pressure regulators most people do not understand what they are talking about so just leave it at that. all fuel pressure regulator will have a vacuum hose connection so that they can regulate fuel pressure in line with manifold pressure/vacuum. a couple of key points. 1. no one uses anything other than a 1:1 adjustable fuel pressure regulator on 99% of turbo applications. 2. people using regulators that have a rate other than 1:1 are usually used on NA cars as they do not produce any boost. so at full throttle they are at 0 boost/vacuum. so people sometimes change their rate to get more fuel in. 3. tomei, nismo, sard, all the japanese regulators will do the job and all are around the same money. they all need to be set-up by someone who knows what they are doing and has a fuel pressure guage. 4. malpassi regulators are rubbish. very popular on NA applications but I have seen failure after failure on turbo cars. hence their nicknames of malpissi or malcrappi. use one if you want to enjoy some inconsistent fuel pressure and be scratching your head in a few months time wondering why the hell your car sometimes doesn't run very well. 5. the other cheap ebay regulators are just as bad. yes they are no complex devices but they still need to be up to a certain standard of quality to dampen any pulses and to properly regulate fuel pressure without spiking and without failure. 6. easiest solution is the nismo reg. if fits in the factory location and requires no extra plumbing. the tuner will just need to install a fuel pressure guage for set-up, then once set remove it. if you want a permanent fuel pressure gauge set-up (it's not a bad idea, fuel pressure is important and can tell you a lot of things) then go for something like Sard which has a port to add a pressure sensor easily. 7. increasing fuel pressure to get more fuel flow is ok if you just need a tiny bit more. but generally if you need a tiny bit more than means your current pump and/or injectors are giving 100% of their fuel just to keep things as you want them at full power. so you have no headroom. and in some circumstances you could have problems. so generally I'd say just get a bigger set of injectors or a fuel pump or even better, get both. raising fuel pressure is a band-aid solution. it's the cheap way out.

yeah best just to do it piece by piece as time and funds permit. also doing it that way you'll get to see which ones really do affect handling/nvh/feel etc. and which ones you cannot even tell you changed!

lol, I am a long way from serious driver or serious S13! and yes badhairdave can come too. all this large turbo is giving me turbo envy... now thinking mine is too small... looks like you should have a great set-up there.

The did this trust sump extension for me. welded onto a brand new sump. excellent work. The N1 Nur engine for my current R32. sitting at prime garage a Super GT car in their workshop for race prep for the next round! It looks funny squeezed into their old workshop. but they are the best. My N1 Nur motor again packed in amongst the gear. the headwork on it. The R32 GTST with the 2.2L SR20 and motec ECU etc that is just sitting outside. I've been trying to get Tets to sell it to me for about 2 years now! he will cave any moment. I'm sure of it. lol. The Togue/Circuit Civic sitting outside. It's absolutely mental. I'd love to own it too. Hard to imagine both the R32 and the Civic are street registered in Japan! One last shot of the front. I have been to lots and lots of workshops in Japan and Prime by far has the most old school kind of feel. Like you can drop in for a drink and a smoke and have chat about plans etc. and stuff is everywhere, but the mess and chaos works for them. and out of this grubby packed workshop they produce immaculate work. and it's always crammed with hot cars and engines. If you like by way of comparison I can post pics of say Garage Saurus which is very different.

ok, my 26 head being ported! the engine 'room'. it is at least a sealed off room from the rest of the shop, but it's crammed full of customer engines. that my RB26 N1 Nur engine in the foreground (upside down) getting the Prime Garage treatment, and behind it is a serious 2JZ... background, assorted parts... bits of my disassembled engine on it's accompanying stand. every engine he's building is on it's stand with a car like this beside it for all the parts so nothing gets lost in the chaos and mess in the place. The crank I was talking about. 1 of only 5 ever made. Tets at prime used one in the engine he built for D1 driver yoshioka (AE86). It's 20 valve 4AG puts out 357ps at the wheels and it's NA!!!! The HKS crank (bottom of pic) tets said 'is like rubbish' in comparison. lol, most AE86 owners would kill just for the HKS one, he just has it lying around... Tono, mechanic at prime garage: RB26 N1 Nur motor arriving at Prime Garage. anywhere here people would be all "wow check it out" at prime they are more like.... "meh" At this point I'd like to say fck imageshack. I've uploaded so many photos there, spent so many hours doing it and I'd say at least 20% are now fked. they either don't appear, or get 404 or are just plain gone. fkers. pic of one of the engines they built for me. This car was bought with a dud RB26 but the car was immaculate. the guys at prime built up a new engine for it using a brand new crate motor as a base. it got headwork, cams, injectors, HKS GTSS turbos, tomei manifolds, tomei dumps, 8 hours of run in and tuning on their ancient dyno etc. awesome set-up. so responsive. I ended up selling it to a really good mate of mine and he loves it. nice little detail touches when I had it run up on the dyno in aus on low boost it made this power, but more important than the peak power, check out the curve and how much power it makes at 4,000rpm, 5,000rpm etc. fat mid-range is what this car has. engine sitting at prime waiting to go in. the finished engine bay. lovely work from a very old school flavoured shop. Tono slotting it in. front of the shop. Their tuner. I swear he looks just like the guy in the initial D movie (the chinese made one) who plays Takumi's Father. Dead ringer for him I reckon. nothing fancy here for tuning. they set the car up with an EGT gauge in the dump pipe, a wide band 02 meter and display (they weld a bung for that in the front pipe) and add fuel pressure gauge as well. then use the ECU and the jap Apexi Pro software to tune the power FC. the old school dyno. even the laptop looks old school. the headphones are for connected to a knock meter, not a ipod full of J-pop! The main man Tets porting a RB26 head for me. No CNC programs of 5 axis machines here. it's all in his coconut and done by hand. the intake gets ported too. also on the sophisticated milk crate 'head porting room'.... tets is at it for hours. there is days of porting in a RB26 head to do intake, exhaust, combustion chambers, then the intake manifold etc. Tets putting some touches on the donk. the exhaust side. so very nice.

prime garage is like that. engines everywhere. cars stacked. a special one off (well he had 5 made) super duper 4AG crank that is used in yoshioka's mega hp, mega rpm AE86 just lying on a towel on top of a stack of parts etc (it would be worth over $10K if you could even buy one). an old bosch dyno that prints your dyno graph on actual graph paper with one of those little arms like on a polygraph machine or a seismograph! cats all round the place, etc. junk everywhere (like I said do you have a spare RB26 plenum and throttles and tono climbed up the wall like a monkey and there was a set hanging off a nail about 10 feet up the wall!). Tets ports RB26 heads on a milk crate sitting on the ground, but they are works of art. and yet they build and tune Super GT cars, D1 cars, and my cars... and the tiny lot outside holds some awesome cars. a big chaser sedan with a 550HP SR20 in it!, a r32 GTST track car running a 2.2L SR20 and motec! a togue Civic running some built honda motor (might be K20A?) and completely gutted to get it's weight under 1000kg etc. I'll find some pics.

well haltech ran 11.1 in their car with boost and ecu tuning. I would say a 10.9 is possible with some boost, exhaust and some tuning. I would also say the haltech is probably the pick of the ecus around. but it you want it to be a consistent 10 second car and stay reliable then I'd be doing a fair few more upgrades. look at a small turbo upgrade so you don't have to run the stockers so hard, you may or may not need bigger injectors to go with them, and look at things like transmission cooler to give the thing a chance at a long life.

yeah start with the basic ones like castor rod bushes, front upper control arm bushes, if you have GTR then front lower control arm doesn't have bushes, do the steering rack mount bushes, and swaybar mount and link bushes. then move on to the rear, rear upper control arm, rear lower control arm, rear traction rod, then the 4 big subframe bushes and do the diff cradle mount bushes and the diff mount bushes and the rear swaybar bushes too. that's most of the key ones. car will feel like new after that. it adds up pretty quick, just getting all the diff bushes is something like $400 or more, subframe bushes for the 4 proper replacement ones is about $180, and then there's the labour of removing every arm and the rear subframe and diff. if you can do a lot of the work like removing the bits yourself and just take the arms and subframe somewhere to get the bushes done that will save a lot of $. subframe ones are still tricky as they are basically burnt/cut/pressed out and can be a bitch to do. most of the others are just press out, press in.

. haha. that sounds way to fancy. we just get 2 barn door hinges and attach to front of sunroof. then as I approach each corner, reach around down shift, then punch it up with my fist and hold till turn in. just like a veyron... only better.

very nice mate. what are you doing to that poor virginal car! it should be one hell of a beast with 3.1L and those two massive turbos! I'm sure you've told me before but what plans for the head?

it will be a great day. always is. if you have nothing to do this weekend definitely get on out there.

agreed. as you know I very nearly didn't buy it when I found out it had a sunroof. in all the pics I'd seen I didn't see the sunroof. after my 32 GTST with sunroof I'd promised myself never again, but the car had all the right gear for the right price so I compromised again. and yeah mate wakefield is a go. showdown will be good. in fact the little silvia might do well there. your thing will be pretty wild around wakefield and the silvia has just the right amount of torque. it'll be interesting to see which one you can drive around there quicker. actually yours will be quicker. it has so much good gear now. the titanium exhaust is worth 3 or 4 seconds at least....hehe. Phunky: definitely try and get to oran before it closes. if you can't get your car up here mate we could probably even share mine for a day. you don't want to miss driving it before it closes. it's a fun track. GTs30t: sunroofs are bad for track car. less headroom, plus more weight from the sunroof and the extra bracing they add under the roof. plus of course if you roll there is a chance of something penetrating that space. but mostly the biggest killer is the headroom or lack thereof. One day I'll probably just get it removed and get the hole welded up. I would have never bought another sunroof track car but this particular one had all the right bits so I caved.

yep I agree with duncan. getting a good pedal feel out of a 32 GTR is not hard. same with me, rebuilt standard calipers, braided lines, cusco master stopper and a new master cylinder. that was my old set-up and with good pads and good fluid and regular bleeding it had great pedal. I have the same brakes (32 GTR sumitomos) in my silvia which is non ABS and also has braided lines etc and the pedal is no better in that car. maybe a tiny bit firmer right at the top of the travel but in track use or hard driving there is no real difference in confidence or feel (well except that you can lock brakes in the silvia!). and there is enough feel in the standard gear that with some time in the car you can easily brake right to the ABS/lock-up threshold without triggering it. I have never bled the ABS unit either. and I've replaced lines etc too.

if you seriously did ALL the suspension bushes we are talking thousands of dollars in parts and labour. there are heps in the rear end (diff mounts front and rear, UCA, LCA etc).

I like everything in together. and if I just want skylines, just search skyline or GTR or GTST etc. works for me.